The joy of walking

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1:39The documentary, home of the best documentaries from the BBC World Service. This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. People fixing the world.

2:01Hi there, my name is Myra Anubi and today I'm out for a walk at some woods right outside my doorstep. Now it's mid-morning on a typical autumn day so a little windy and wet but warm enough for me to be out here without a coat and despite the odd muddy patch of ground it is actually a pleasant talk. I mean the air is so clear here and if you listen closely you'll hear birds and distant noises and catch the trees as they move about in the wind. Now walking is a normal part of life and it's easy to overlook just how good it can be for us. I find it gives me a chance to step away from the normal rush of day-to-day life and slow down for a bit.

2:49I'll sometimes go for a walk in here when I need to clear my mind or when I feel like I haven't done enough steps or exercise during the week but also sometimes when I just need to find a solution to a personal problem and it is amazing how often the solution comes when I put one foot in front of the other. So in this edition of People Fixing the World we're exploring how walking is changing lives. We'll hear about a crowdsourced walking network in the UK that's encouraging people to leave their cars at home. But first, we're finding out how a simple stroll in a park is helping doctors and patients connect around the world.

3:31So get your walking shoes on and let's go find out more about these solutions.

3:42Physical activity is really the miracle job. Dr. David Subger is a cardiologist in Columbus, Ohio. Day after day, he treats people with conditions that can be improved by regular physical activity. In the United States, about 80 % of us are sedentary. And that means, you know, we're not getting the 150 minutes of recommended physical activity a week. That can lead to all kinds of things that we don't want. heart disease, cancer, dementia. David found his most active patients tended to remain healthy and independent well into their later life. So he started prescribing exercise plans to help his less active patients get moving.

4:30But he found few were following through. So I was really frustrated, with my ability to motivate my patients to be physically active. I invited a patient to go for a walk with my family in the park that Saturday, and that's where all the wonderful stuff started happening. How did it grow from there? Our first walk was six months later. We had over 100 people and we knew that we were on to something. This was the start of his non-profit Walk with a Doc. Once a week, David heads out to his local park to meet his patients. He starts the session with a short talk on health-related topics like sleep or high blood pressure.

5:15And then everyone sets off together on a 30 to 60-minute stroll. It's just really a wonderful way to connect. But it's also important, I think, for our community members, if they do want to talk about whether or not they should take a cholesterol medicine, It's nice maybe to have the ear of a physician and see what she or he says. And I wonder, does it break down barriers? You know, like the fear of the white coat, seeing doctors in a different setting? Yes. Out in the park, we're all on the same ground. The doctors are wearing baseball hats and shorts. He started the project in 2005. and a few years later, he was visited by a group of other doctors who were inspired to start their own Walk With A Doc branch.

6:03Word started to spread and his local initiatives steadily grew into an international movement. We now have rapidly grown to 735 chapters in 42 countries, which is super exciting. We provide everything for whatever the physician needs. If it's insurance, a web page, merchandise for their chapters, paperwork, all the things that we don't want the doctor to have to deal with. As a physician, you know, as a doctor, it started with your patients. Have you seen any changes? I have. Our patients that are going to the walk, they feel more empowered. They feel more educated. We did an informal survey and we saw that over 90 % of our respondees increased their level of exercise.

7:00And are the doctors participating for free? They are. We have an incredible global community, thousands of physicians. Everyone is a volunteer. The reward of being with our community outside the sterile walls of a medical office are so rewarding that it's something I'll be doing and our global physicians will be doing for a very long time. I wanted to know how the initiative has worked in different countries. David told me it's been particularly successful in Hungary. So we sent our reporter, Jakob Thorpe, to take part in one of their recent outings.

7:45It's 8.30 in the morning in Vesprim, a city in western Hungary. I'm standing in a hotel car park as a crowd gathers. Small family groups, a few older men and lots of older women, wrapped up against a blustery wind. They are greeted by Dr Borbala Stern, known by the group as Bori. Dr Stern heads the local branch of Walk with a Doc. Around once a month, she leads a group on a walk and talk through the city. Every walk starts with a short conversation, and I thought we could talk about mindful eating. It's important because at mealtimes we often forget about what we are doing. We keep tapping our phones or watch the TV and don't pay attention to what we are eating.

8:34So I'd like us to do an exercise where we pay more attention. Dr Stern asks everyone to sit down and gives everyone a single raisin. Where is the light running on the surface? She asks the group to use all their senses as they hold the raisin in their mouths, before slowly chewing and swallowing it. How did this experience feel for you? how conscious are you normally, for example, of a cup of coffee or a cake or a delicious soup. I'm a slow eater. I enjoy chewing on my food, tasting the flavours, spreading through my mouth. The interesting thing for me was that while the raisin was in the palm of my hand, its wrinkly surface actually looked like a human brain.

9:27Your homework, if you would like some, is to pay full attention to one activity this week, like your morning coffee or the first page of a book you read each day. After the health chat, we get on the move. There's around 20 walkers, ranging from energetic children to older adults. Are you ready to go? We can go on our usual route. We make our way down into the Shade Valley. Above us, West Brim Castle's wide plastered walls shine in the morning sun. I join Dr Stern, who's walking at the front of the group. She tells me she started this group in July 2024. We switched over to English for a bit. As Dr Stern explained, she was interested in holistic medicine.

10:15This is where you treat the whole person, rather than focus on an isolated symptom or disease. The lifestyle medicine has six pillars. They are the nutrition, exercise, sleep, social connection, stress management and avoiding harmful substances. With the walk with the dog we can deliver three of six pillars. They are exercise, stress management and social connection and we have an added extra bonus, the time in the nature. We continue along the green path next to Shadstream. As we pass through the old town, Soviet-style apartment blocks make way for all the village houses. I get talking to Laszlo, who is 75.

11:15He said it had been a while since he had gone on a group walk, but he'd heard about this session at his pensioners' club.

11:27People need to be part of a community. Unfortunately, I lost my wife 12 years ago, so I live alone. So in order to live properly, you need to go to programmes and activities. That's very important. You mustn't just sit at home. You definitely need to be physically active for one, two or three hours a day, even if you don't move very quickly. Because if your blood isn't circulating, your physical condition deteriorates more quickly too. A little further ahead, I fell into step next to Zsuzha Gouyash, a retired maths teacher, who tells me she started coming last year. I like the fact that doctors step outside the confines of the operating theatre and the doctor's surgery, and that in a freer, more informal setting, you have the opportunity to ask questions if you want to.

12:20So if someone has a particular kind of problem or a question, she can answer that as well. It's an added opportunity, on top of simply being outdoors and going for a walk in nice weather. As we walk in the shade of poplar, oak and chestnut trees, I ask Dr. Shren how she got involved with Walk with a Doc. She tells me she first heard about it when living and working in Spain and set up a branch in Valencia. But when she returned to Hungary, she realised there were just two branches in the whole country. One of the things holding them back was that all the resources were in English. Hungarians generally aren't very good at foreign languages and we also have several older woke leaders.

13:04Even though they are doctors, English isn't so easy for them. We didn't want them to be excluded from the works, and we wanted to reach as many people as possible. So Dr Stern worked with David and his US team to create a Hungarian registration form that connects with the central organisation. They also launched a Hungarian social media account to spread the message. Within a year, they had expanded to 38 branches. One of the newer branches is run by Anna Týmar, who joined us on the walk. I've been running the programme in my hometown since 2025. It's a small town of around 20 ,000 people, and we get between 20 and 60 people on the monthly walks.

13:54Some of them are regulars, but there are always three or four new walkers as well, ranging from very young children to elderly people. As a GP, I was worried that I'd effectively be opening up an extra surgery session, but fortunately that hasn't proved to be the case. When people come on these walks, they don't want to talk about their illnesses. They're more interested in talking about being healthy. And for us, too, it's something that recharges our batteries and gives us a sense that what we do is worthwhile. Dr. Timar has seen a rise in demand for the community walks. In our town, people of different ages go walking weekly, independently of our programme.

14:36They organise it themselves through social media, choosing different distances. What's their main motivation? It's the simplest form of exercise there is. You don't need anything special, really, just a comfortable pair of shoes. And it's accessible to anyone. We're also managing stress, because while I'm walking and talking to other people, Whatever is preoccupying or worrying me recedes into the background for a while. And then there is the personal connection, which I think has largely disappeared from our lives. We reach St. Stephen's Viaduct, a towering bridge carrying traffic across the valley below.

15:14As we head up to the car park, the group is in great spirits. As we say our goodbyes, Dr. Stern leaves me with a parting thought. I think it is much more than a walk. It is social connection, education, but I think the most important thing is the genuine care of the doctor. Without that, I think it couldn't work. Dr Bobala Stjern ending that report from Jakob Thorpe in Hungary about the doctors taking their patients on walks. This is the documentary from the BBC World Service.

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18:34You're listening to People Fixing the World from the BBC Wealth Service. I'm Myra Anubi and today I'm joining you from a wood near my house where I often go walking because it's all about the wonderful ways walking can help us every day. But if you're like me, you're probably wondering how much walking should you even be doing? Well, a study published by the Lancet Medical Journal last year found that walking 7 ,000 steps a day could be great to boost your brain power but also to help protect you against a range of different diseases. that would mean walking for about an hour at a brisk pace and we've just heard how doctors leading walks is helping to break down the barriers that exist between medics and their patients in hungary but now we're going to london where our reporter claire bates is finding out how an innovative walking map of the uk can help her reconnect with her home city london is a busy place and as someone who lives and works in the city i'm usually trying to get from A to B the quickest way.

19:39The trouble is when I get to my destination I often feel tense and stressed with a little sense of how I got there and it turns out I'm not alone. If I wanted to drive or get the train or if you even want to fly somewhere then quite often there's an app for that but for some reason even though we've been walking on these islands for hundreds of thousands of years actually it's not that easy to always find your way so I wanted to do something about that. That's Daniel Ravan Ellison. He realised modern life is set up for speed and that all too often we're encouraged to focus on the destination rather than the journey itself.

20:17His solution was to create a national walking network with routes crisscrossing Britain. But he couldn't do it on his own, so he put out a call for volunteers to help map and test the paths. He called his non-profit Slowways. Our incredible network of volunteers have shared over 10 ,000 routes that stretch for 150 ,000 kilometres. These routes connect every town, city and national landscape across the country and you can walk from the north of Scotland right down to the south of England entirely on routes that are rated four or five stars and have been triple checked by our volunteers which is absolutely incredible.

20:54The routes are available through the Slow Ways website where walkers can browse and download them. Dan says they can be used on other navigation apps and followed on a smartphone. He hopes the project will help reconnect people with our oldest form of transport. Humans are a walking species. Fundamentally, the evidence shows us that it can lengthen our lives, it can improve the quality of our lives, it can improve connections between people, places, nature, while having this lighter touch on the planet, literally reducing carbon emissions. Dan agreed to show me how slow waves works, and we chose a route starting near BBC headquarters and heading to one of London's major train and tube stations.

21:36Now, as you can probably tell from the sounds around me, we are now at a very busy intersection. We are by Otzer Circus Tube. And this is going to be the start of our walk? Exactly. It's the beginning of the Slayaway that heads north-west, surrounded by retail, across to Hyde Park, and then up to Paddington, which is a busy train station. Great. OK, so I have got the app on my phone. So here we are. We've got it. It's called Pad Ox 3. And it's been given already a five-star rating. OK, so we need to cross over the road and take the first right. So let's do that now.

22:19I must say, I would usually pop on the tube to get to Paddington. It's about a 10-minute tube ride. I think this will take us about 30 minutes to go and walk it. So it's two-thirds longer, but 1 ,000 times better. I mean, it's a lovely sunny day, so I'm already quite a lot happier than I would be if I was down in the bowels of the underground system. Right, so we're in a place called Hanover Square, which is rather nice. It's a nice little green awaits. It's surrounded by absolutely beautiful, giant London plane trees with dappled light coming through the branches and some birds flying around.

22:57And over here we've got some water. I've never noticed this either. We carried on passing hotel doormen in top hats and waistcoats, a giant pink limousine and an old house with purple flowers tumbling over the brickwork. We are entering Hyde Park. It feels like a sudden relief, doesn't it? It feels like a whole weight has come off our heads and shoulders. It's so tranquil and peaceful instantly. By going this way, we go into a beautiful area of woodland with really long meadow grass and you get butterflies there. And oh, there's an ice cream van if you want an ice cream. Which you can probably buy an ice cream with the three quid you save by not going on the tube, so...

23:43Yeah, if you're lucky. Heading north out of the park, we passed the usual cars and black cabs, but also some horses from a nearby stable. It was a small, unexpected detail that's easy to miss if you're in a rush. When you go into the tube or a bus or get into a car, it's really teleporting you from one place to another, especially if you're burying your brain in a telephone conversation or some music or something like that. Whereas the more you slow down, the more open you are as well to having experiences.

24:18After moving to south-west England, Dan used walking to get to know his new surroundings. I moved myself to Devon, and a key thing I did to get to know my local area was I got the train or the bus to neighbouring villages and towns and walked back in again. It gave me an incredible sense of place and grounding.

24:40We've made it all the way from Oxford Circus to Paddington. I can see a group of women wearing pink hats and pink tutus, so I'm guessing they're on a hen do. Yeah, I guess if I'd gone by Tube, I wouldn't have thought twice about the journey, but I think this evening when I go home, I'm going to remember bits. That's the power of it. I think that the motor car and faster forms of travel have broken our memory into asking people good ways to go. We can remember that reflex and, you know, discover places in a way that we used to. I enjoyed my walk with Dan, and for the most part, it was remarkably straightforward.

25:19We only made one small diversion to get round a burst water main in the park. But Dan says creating slow ways has revealed that walking is often treated as an afterthought in the way we design and manage our landscape. About a quarter of the time there are things that go wrong and often what that is is that paths turn into roads and the roads just aren't safe to walk down. Sometimes you find that there's a farm that has blocked a path that should be accessible and for some reason when it comes to walking this thing that's most accessible to the most people, that's most affordable, that's most environmentally friendly, there's often no signage.

25:56And if there is signage, it's hard for people to understand. So, you know, what if Britain, what if the world, right, had a footpath network that was fully properly signed, inviting people and guiding people and supporting people to make those journeys by foot? And given the present reality, as we said, there are challenges. have you changed your approach are you going to do something different now? So we're evolving Slow Ways into a much bigger project much more ambitious project called Good Ways and Good Ways will enable people and non-profit organizations and charities to share walking routes and networks that meet people's different interests and needs and sharing those routes that are great for finding kingfishers or discovering castles or those things that will motivate people to get out and about and we're hoping that the millions of people will join in.

26:47Many thanks to Claire Bates for that report. Now, let me know if this program has inspired you to either walk a bit more or spend time outdoors by sending me a WhatsApp message to the number plus 44 8000 321 721. You've been listening to People Fixing the World on the documentary. I'm Myra Anubi, and I'll be back next week with more positive news. Until then, from me in these woods, the trees and the birds, thanks for listening.